Staughton Lynd: I believe that once the company was handed this power - nothing in the law required it - once the workers were required to surrender their only practical weapon to do something about it, namely the right to strike, it was all over. Yes, there was McCarthy, yes there was etc., etc., etc., but I think the die was cast from the CIO's very beginnings.

Rob Kall:
Now, you say in your book that collective bargaining agreements were,
for these men, an obstacle. That's what
you're talking about here, that once they...

Staughton Lynd:
Well, I don't mean the workers should never enter into a contract, I
don't mean that at all; that may be the right thing to do. I'm talking about the substance of what has
been the typical trade union contract in this country since 1937, and if any of
your listeners are covered by a union contract that doesn't require surrender
of the right to strike during the life of the contract, I'd like to hear from
them, because (laughs) I don't think are many such contracts.

Rob Kall:
And you say that once the have such a contract, the shop steward becomes
a "cop for the boss."

Staughton Lynd:
That's right; and that I learned from another rank and file worker named
Marty Glaberman, who was not a steelworker, he was an autoworker. There is a pamphlet that he helped to write
not long after WWII in which he described the trajectory of the man or woman
who is chosen by his or her fellow workers to be their representative, to get
in the foreman's face, to be the person who wasn't afraid to speak up, and they
thought that the way to do that was to elect that person shop steward. Well, the problem was that if you have a
contract that says the workers can't strike, then the next time the people in
your local "wildcat," you've got to stand at the plant door and pretend to be
telling them to go back to work. I think
it's an accurate analysis. The pamphlet
is called Punching Out, and you can find it in a collection of Marty
Glaberman's writings published by the Charles Kerr Publishing Company in
Chicago.

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Rob Kall:
OK. What you're saying in your
book is that unions became top down, the unions deals that they signed
basically emasculated and eviscerated the power of the union, and that once the
deal was signed, the leadership of the unions became the police for the
employers!

Staughton Lynd:
That's a fair summary.

Rob Kall: No
wonder that the unions are just flailing and failing now! There is a great quote you have in here from
Frederick Douglas that I have to read, and it goes just like this:

" Those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate
agitation are people who want crops without plowing up the ground; they want
rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the awful roar
of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical
one, and it may be both moral and physical, but it must be a struggle. Power
concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. Find out what people will submit to, and you
will find out the exact measure of injustice and wrong which will be imposed
upon them , and these
will continue till they are resisted with either words or blows, or with both.
The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they
oppress. "

Staughton Lynd: You like that? (laughs)
And as I say in the book: imagine a local trade union in the Midwest in
a community like Youngstown, where there is a substantial African American
Community, but the whole tone, the majority tone of the community, is set by
White immigrants from Eastern Europe, and Italy, and the Catholic Church that
has represented them over the years. And
in that community, my friend the late Ed Mann said "Now, I don't like to read
to people, but I want to read you these words," and he read exactly the words
that you've quoted, and then said "We've been listening to politicians all
morning saying next to nothing, but I'm telling you that I'm going down that
hill to occupy that US Steel headquarters, and maybe some of you would like to
come with me." And people sprang to
their feet, charged out the door, ran down the hill, broke in the door, and
occupied the building. It was quite a
day.

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Rob Kall: That's change! That's how it happens. It doesn't happen by some representative of
the union saying "Don't do anything, because we made a deal and now we're
getting screwed anyway." You know? What you're also writing about, the
Archbishop, Romero, he stood up to a lot of people, a lot of administrators who
said "You can't do that." Apparently, at
least the Pope who he was Archbishop under gave him some encouragement and
support.

Staughton Lynd: Initially, yes. And then there was a change in the Papacy,
and Romero had the experience of holding in his arms the blood-soaked body of
the first young man that he had consecrated as a Priest. And when he went to Italy to speak to the new
Pope, he took with him pictures of this young man who had been not only
murdered, but brutally murdered. The
Pope said "Well, didn't they say he was a Communist?"

Rob Kall has spent his adult life as an awakener and empowerer-- first in the field of biofeedback, inventing products, developing software and a music recording label, MuPsych, within the company he founded in 1978-- Futurehealth, and founding, organizing and running 3 conferences: Winter Brain, on Neurofeedback and consciousness, Optimal Functioning and Positive Psychology (a pioneer in the field of Positive Psychology, first presenting workshops on it in 1985) and Storycon Summit Meeting on the Art Science and Application of Story-- each the first of their kind. Then, when he found the process of raising people's consciousness and empowering them to take more control of their lives one person at a time was too slow, he founded Opednews.com-- which has been the top search result on Google for the terms liberal news and progressive opinion for several years. Rob began his Bottom-up Radio show, broadcast on WNJC 1360 AM to Metro Philly, also available on iTunes, covering the transition of our culture, business and world from predominantly Top-down (hierarchical, centralized, authoritarian, patriarchal, big) to bottom-up (egalitarian, local, interdependent, grassroots, archetypal feminine and small.) Recent long-term projects include a book, Bottom-up-- The Connection Revolution, debillionairizing the planet and the Psychopathy Defense and Optimization Project.